168: Church Spotlight: How A Planning Party Sparked Creativity, Community, and Collaboration | Kelly Wilson

In this episode, Laurie Graham welcomes guest Kelly Wilson to discuss her experience implementing a "planning party" at her small church. 

Kelly shares how the planning party concept helped address the challenges she and her husband faced as the primary planners and implementers of church activities.

The planning party involved the congregation in a low-pressure way to generate ideas ...

• leading to a positive response
• successful volunteer recruitment
• ongoing enthusiasm

Kelly explains the execution and impact of the planning party, and encourages other small churches to try this approach to build momentum, gain volunteers, and share the workload of ministry.

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Transcript

Laurie Graham: 0:01

Hey, welcome to the small church ministry podcast, where we help volunteers and ministry leaders experience less stress, more joy and greater impact as we share strategies that actually do work in smaller churches. I'm your host. Laurie Graham, let's dive in. You. You. Hey, hey, welcome to the small church ministry podcast where we share practical, boots on the ground solutions to some of the most common struggles in small churches pretty much everywhere, whether you realize, realize it or not, even though small churches are so different from each other, like some of us are rural and some small towns and some cities and some in really conservative cultures and and others are Pentecostal or just any kind of denominations all over the board, even though we look so different, we have so much in common. Main struggles in small churches, like with numbers or attendance or volunteers or the same people doing so much of the same thing into a whole 8020 rule, Pastor burnout, conflict, struggles embracing change or attracting new families. Like, if you're listening, does some of this sound familiar? Like, how about keeping teens after graduation, or teaching mixed age classes, or feeling competition with the big church down the road? Or even that feeling that you wonder if your church is going to survive, like if it's going to be around with an aging population, or so many changes even within the culture. So we all have so many struggles in common. And here's the thing, there are solutions, there are tools and strategies that work in small churches. Small church ministry isn't less ministry than big church ministry, but it's really, really different. So that's what we do here on the small church ministry podcast. We share solutions to common small church struggles and challenges, tools and strategies that work, and this is how we know they work. It's not because we read it in a book or saw the five steps to fix something. We know they work because we see it, we do it, we share it, and we're watching just different tools. Tools and strategies work all over the place. Today, on the podcast, we're talking about one specific tool that we've seen work over and over again in small churches everywhere to help build momentum, gain volunteers, develop teams and share the workload. Even, in fact, it's so effective, we have worked to develop tools that make it even easier and save time so we can all have more impact. Because the truth is, we don't have to keep reinventing the wheel when there are tools and strategies that actually work. So the tool we're going to talk about on this episode today is all about planning parties. If you are burnt out on planning, or tired of doing it all by yourself, or you have an aversion to meetings, or you're like, oh my gosh, we're going to talk about planning. Then this episode is actually especially for you. So joining us today to share her experience with a planning party. Is Kelly Wilson, Kelly, I'm so glad you're joining me today. How are you how's your day been? Is it good? Is it cold? Where you are? I don't even know where you're coming in from. Yes,

Kelly Wilson: 3:05

it's been a good day. Um, it? It? I live in Ohio, right on the Pennsylvania border. So Ohio, you know, I'm in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and it's very cold out there, very icy. But I'm warming here. So I'm thankful.

Laurie Graham: 3:22

I'm glad you're warm inside. Well, before we talk and talk, you know, jump into talking specifically about planning parties. Can you just let everybody know, like, like, give us some background about you or your church, or how you're involved in the ministry there?

Kelly Wilson: 3:35

Yes, um, we go. Our church is faith, fellowship, Baptist. And my husband's been there at the church for about 10 years. He's been the pastor there for about nine so it's actually quite a drive from where we live. It's about 40 minutes, and it's in Pennsylvania, and we live in Ohio. So okay, it's just that part of it is a little bit tricky with the drive in and all that. But the the first couple times we went to our church, it just felt like home, and they're the sweetest people, and we just know God put us there, and we're very, very happy there.

Laurie Graham: 4:18

That is awesome. So how did you find us here at small church ministry? Did you find us through the Facebook community or conference or something else? It

Kelly Wilson: 4:25

was definitely the Facebook community. I believe I was searching for just church ideas or church groups or something like that on Facebook because I really wanted some advice, and I found small as soon as I saw small church ministry, I thought, that is what I need. I need that group.

Laurie Graham: 4:48

Yeah, what? How were you feeling when you found us like about ministry, any major emotions or struggles or challenges? You said you were searching for some ideas. So,

Kelly Wilson: 4:56

yes, I was feeling excited to. See my church grow, but realizing that I could not do it all, and I was feeling very confused, like how I was feeling, how do I go from here, and what's the best way to do all the things I had ideas for, but I couldn't make happen. I was just feeling like, excited, but also I didn't know how to move forward, I guess is how I would describe it.

Laurie Graham: 5:30

I remember we jumped on a call kind of early on, and I think you had shared how you and your husband, or even maybe a lot of you just felt like you were doing all the planning and all the implementing, and if you couldn't really do it, it wasn't happening. Is that accurate?

Kelly Wilson: 5:48

Yes. So, um, I was feeling, um, sorry I was I wrote down a couple of ideas here, and I wanted to look at them really quick. Oh, so yes, I was feeling that my husband and I should be doing the planning for our church, because I felt guilt over trying to pull people in and then but, but throughout the year, I was starting to have people maybe add activities through the year. Like, they would say, oh, you know, I really was thinking about doing this or that, so we would add it into the schedule. So that was good, but I never felt that I could say, like, Hey, here's my idea. Will you help me with this? Like, would you jump on board? So then to pull people into my idea felt wrong, but I wasn't really getting much of any input from the people. So yes, I was feeling like I wanted to do all the activities, but I wasn't able to make it work.

Laurie Graham: 6:56

Yeah, yeah. I love that. You just mentioned that you felt like you should be doing all the planning. You know, I think a lot of people, whether it's pastor, married to the pastor, core volunteers, women's ministry leader, just somebody who's been in the church as a founding member, we've got a lot of shoulds going on in our head. And sometimes we actually feel like we should have the burden of ministry like, like, this should be on us. You know, whether we're getting paid or we're just in a position or or those kind of things, we have a lot of different shoulds going on. And so it's kind of fun when you start getting other people involved and share not just the work of ministry, but the joy of ministry. And there's ways to do that that can be really innovative and kind of creative. And one thing that we have loved is the planning parties. And I know you just did a planning party, and you asked a lot of questions before you did it, because it was kind of a new concept. But for those who are listening who have no idea what we're talking about, like, what's a planning party? Why is this different than any time we've tried to do a planning party, how would you actually explain what a planning party is?

Kelly Wilson: 8:01

Um, so it's a whole different way of looking at involving people and like, I guess I could talk about what you do, or I could talk about, like, how it how you are pulling people in. Um, I feel like how you're pulling people in is you're allowing them to know that they're valued and that their opinion matters, and that you want to know what interests them. And, um, it's a good way to do it, because you have them sit down and write down their ideas instead of Hey. You're not getting up there and saying, like, Hey, does anyone have new ideas for this year, or does anyone want to volunteer? Instead, you're saying, Hey, here's a notepad. Can you write down some ideas for us? And my husband's stressed in that meeting, we're not asking you to do this event. We just want ideas for events. And anyway, that just that just gave it a whole new outlook, I think, to people like, oh, like, so anything goes. And we kept saying, anything goes, you can put down any idea you want. And that just got the ball rolling. And it went so well.

Laurie Graham: 9:52

I love that you said the planning parties, it's a new way of involving people, like, because that really is one of the keys, is we're involving more people than normal. And I think the other key that you mentioned is that it there's no pressure, like, it's involving people without that pressure, or that expectation that your idea has to be the right idea, or that you're going to be the one that's going to do this. And we'll talk a little bit about that, because if people are unfamiliar listening right now, they're like, oh, great, more ideas that I have to do right? And that's not how these work. But I love that you brought up a couple of the keys to to the planning parties and things. That and writing down ideas, it's a safe place. There's there's no pressure, but there is results from this. Yes. Why did you want to try doing a planning party? Kelly, and can you even share maybe some of your fears? Because you were concerned this might not work, and a lot of people are. So do you want to talk about that a little bit? Yes. Why you wanted to try it, and also what you were concerned about? Yes.

Kelly Wilson: 10:57

So first, I was afraid that people would feel very confused about what we were doing, because we actually had ours at our noon service hour at 11, and we had tables in our auditorium, which we never do. We've never done that. And we had like candies on the tables. And I was just expecting people to walk in and say, like we had introduced it weeks ahead, but I expected people to come in and say, What is this and what are we doing? And I was kind of expecting maybe some frustration, like, why are you I was afraid people would feel, why are you trying to get us to give you ideas? Like, I don't, I don't have ideas. I was afraid of that. Um, yeah. Oh, and then I was also and that wasn't how they felt. It was not at all, not even close to what it really happened. And I was also afraid that I would only have the people that already do most of the work be the ones with ideas, and I would be overworking them even more. So it was just, I was just a lot of fears I had walking into it,

Laurie Graham: 12:14

yeah, yeah. And what surprised you? What was the result? How did people feel about being asked, and especially the people maybe who haven't been super involved?

Kelly Wilson: 12:24

It was amazing. So my husband, we and if you look on small church ministry website, and you go to the planning event, you can see all the details of how to do this. But we went step by step into how many minutes each segment would take. So we said, Instead of setting a timer, my husband had music playing for that length of time. So when the music was over, you were done writing your ideas. And we had, we did have people chatting a lot, which I thought might ruin it, but it didn't. It really didn't. People were writing down so many great ideas. Then we had the and this is on the website you have each table, say one person from each table, say each idea from that table, and then you clap when that table is done. And it, I don't want to get emotional, but it just, it completely amazed me, just the ideas and the just the thought that that people, our people, put into what we could do at our church and um, there was outreach ideas, there was fellowship ideas, there was um, fun ideas. My husband and I felt so like we were shocked, and we were just so thankful that we that we took the time to ask our people in that way, and then we put all the ideas on the wall. Now I will say we did end up running out of time, so we ended up putting all the ideas on the wall. And then we did the stickers, which you will see that online, where you choose, like you let everyone have, I believe. Is it 10 stickers, I believe, and you put, I think you're allowed to put three stickers on, on your favorite events. So people just walked around. I mean, they would have kept going, but we had to stop because we were running out of time. But people put all their stickers on, and then we ran out of time then, and we ended up, my husband and I ended up choosing which events got the most votes, like choosing, and then we ended up putting them on the calendar. But like, as a tentative idea, like this is the these are the dates where thinking would work. And then the following Sunday, we had people volunteer for the events. And do you want me to keep going with, with what happened?

Laurie Graham: 15:06

Yeah, did you have people volunteer? Because I know this was one of the fears, right, is that a lot of people have this fear we're going to get these ideas and no one's going to volunteer, and I'm going to get stuck. So what was your experience? It was

Kelly Wilson: 15:18

amazing. So we did it the next Sunday, which I didn't want to do. I was hoping to get it all done at one time, because my thought was, whoever writes down on their idea may want to. Volunteer for that activity. What if they're not there the next Sunday? Like, what do we do now? And my husband just kept saying, it'll be okay, like, whatever happens. And we walked into it telling ourselves, if we have no events on the calendar this year, that's okay, because that's what our church chose this year. Like, that's fine. I'm not going to be upset at all because our people work long hours and we're small, and it's just, we're just busy people. So anyway, the next Sunday, after the service, my husband, Nathaniel, he got up there and he said, Okay, oh, I didn't, I didn't say this. This wasn't on the website, but we on the in the article, but we decided to put each event on a three by five card, and then we put the date that we were thinking we would have the event. So this way, when we said, like, here's an up, here's one event, and my husband would hold it up, like, here's the event. This is, you know, going to the animal park and and we've picked the summer. Does anyone want to do that? Then you have to actually take it, and you're taking it home with you. I feel like that helps people to say, like, they're like, looking at it like, okay, yeah, I'll take that. And so anyway, we did that. And my husband got to the first event, which I don't even remember what it was, and there was silence. And I was like, Oh no. Like, and I, in a way, I just wanted to say, like, I'll do them all. Like, I'll just take it. And I was like, thinking, like, no, like, I'm sure somebody and so, like, he, he actually waited a couple minutes. Like, okay, like, does anyone want to and I think he put that one aside, and he got the next one and said it, and someone volunteered, and we handed it out, and then the next one, and someone volunteered, and we got through, we actually have every event that we picked on our calendar, and we had a couple people volunteer that weren't even in the service the last the Sunday before to even write Yes, but they said, that sounds like a great activity. All run it, and even on that Sunday, of everyone volunteering, I had for the next two to three weeks, people contacting me and saying, Hey, I know from the planning party we weren't able to put a Mother's Day event on the calendar. Could I do that? And I said yes. And they were like, well, would we what if we had a speaker? Would you mind if I looked into that? I was like, Yes, like that. No, not all. Like, please go for it. Like that. Sounds wonderful. I've had so many added events put on to the point that my husband are like, we have a full church year. Like, I hope, like, now we're into the phase of, I hope this goes well, and I hope people don't feel burnt out and all of this, because it's the beginning of the year, yeah, but, um, I'm just so excited, and I'm I'm just blown away how God, and I feel like God moved me out of the way and said, Look What I can do. And, yeah, I'm just really happy.

Laurie Graham: 18:56

Yeah, I love it. I mean, when you were talking about how the table groups like shared their ideas and people clapped like you, that's the first time you got emotional during this podcast. And by the way, don't apologize for that. We like that. We like that a lot because it's it's real, it's very real. But I think one of the things that happens, and I saw it on your face, you know, I get to see you, they don't just hear your voice, but I saw it on your face. It's like, it's this feeling of like the everyone is so supportive and happy, and there's a momentum, and there's like an appreciation of what other people are sharing. And it really, it's a cool event itself, like you're not just planning, yeah, it's like, it's like, its own event. And I love how it can develop some community. And it sounds like that happened for you guys. Yes,

Kelly Wilson: 19:45

oh, it did that. I feel like everyone felt connected, everyone felt valued. And even the kids were in there. We didn't have the youngest kids were downstairs, but like, 10 and up were in there, and they had their own ideas, and one of them got tons of stickers. And so it's actually like a men and boys day out in the fall that they're gonna do. And it was so special to see the kids feeling like, wow, like I had an idea and it got voted on. It was just such a good experience for our church to come together as a family. And I would, I would recommend as soon as it went. That while I was thinking to myself, I need a way to recommend this to every small church, because if it works in my church, it will work in your church. It was so

Laurie Graham: 20:44

well and I love that you said that because you This is new for your church, this was so different for your church. You were used to planning everything you've said like you have. You didn't even want to ask people to step up. People are busy. Like everything you said is exactly why the planning party is so special and and really cool. You know, I wanted to ask you, you mentioned a couple times you kind of alluded to the power of them writing it down, like on the post it or writing down their ideas. Why do you think that is so effective, versus, hey, who has an idea and let's talk out loud, right? Yes.

Kelly Wilson: 21:22

Well, for our church specifically, we are a very, very caring people, and we have we feel deeply for each other. We're very introverted. So there's not many of us in there that are outgoing. So if you were to go up in front of us and say something like, does anyone have an idea? I can think right now of maybe two or three people that would shout out ideas, which in their awesome ideas, but the rest of us are just very quiet, and we're just not gonna say much at all. But you give us a pen and paper, and now I realize we have a ton of ideas. So I think

Laurie Graham: 22:09

so just for fun about how many ideas did you guys come up with? 1230, how many ideas so

Kelly Wilson: 22:16

hundreds? I think there was hundreds. Maybe, maybe I'm seeing hundreds, and it's not, I would say at least 100 ideas. And there was, I would say we were probably 50 people. So it probably was in the hundreds, because I would say each person did at least two, um, you know, maybe more. So yes, like, over 100

Laurie Graham: 22:46

Yeah, most churches that that use our planning party system, the tool that we have, they do. They have hundreds? Hundreds, like some have said, 400 600 ideas, you know, out of 45 minutes of time or something. And oftentimes it's like 20 people. Sometimes it's 50 people, but oftentimes it's more like 1520, 25 people. And did you find you guys did it on a Sunday morning, which is so unique as well. But people welcomed it, huh? It was very well received. Yes,

Kelly Wilson: 23:16

I would say, I told my husband this later, I would say, I feel that because we've been at our church for so long, people feel very comfortable with us, and they appreciate us so much that I feel like there's not much we could do different that they would say, like, oh, I don't want to do that. They just, they love us so much. We love them like we're just a family. So I feel like that's probably one, one reason it went that well, but I was still thinking like I would pick up on little things of like, why are they doing this? And this is strange, and I got none of that they when they walked through the door, they just seemed excited. Like there was, I can think of one person that just, it was just, he likes things to be very, very much in a routine. So I think he followed a little out of sorts. But he his wife loved it, so he very quickly was fine with it. But, um, most of most of the people came in just very excited to sit down, and I think they felt very comfortable.

Laurie Graham: 24:24

Yeah, I love it. Kelly, thank you for coming on just sharing your experience. The fun thing about these planning parties is we've seen churches do it in their youth ministry, in their children's ministry, with their families. You know, you did it on a Sunday morning, which is the first time I've heard of that. We've seen churches use the system for, like all church planning, where they bring leaders together of their different areas, including elders and, you know, women's ministry, Men's Ministry, to do like all church planning. But it's so fun to hear how just little things can be tweaked to fit into different situations. And always, the results are always better than everybody thinks. So do you think you'll do a planning party next year? Like, will this become kind of an annual thing for you all? Oh, 100%

Kelly Wilson: 25:07

I'm not exactly sure how we'll do it next year, because we have so many ideas that didn't even get put on the calendar. Yeah, but I'm figuring we'll probably start with that to read it off the list, so people know what their ideas are, so they have a reminder, and then we'll start from there. So I'm so excited to put it in the mirror. Yes,

Laurie Graham: 25:30

yeah. I think it's so important to remember that the people around us, when they're given and ourselves too, right, when we have a safe space where creativity is allowed and we're going to be encouraged and we're welcomed in ministry changes, like so many times we've had, we've had shut down experiences, right where we don't feel safe to share, or we had a terrible experience volunteering, and when we start changing that culture to be this place, or we can celebrate and welcome ideas from the 10 year old right up to the 85 year old. And you know, where we value what each other love and what they're thinking and how they're feeling, things really start changing. So Kelly, just in wrapping this up, if you could give one piece of advice to a listener right now who's listening thinking, Oh, I don't think that's going to work in my church. What would you tell them?

Kelly Wilson: 26:28

I would say, please go to the article, and just read through it three, four or five times, and kind of get in your mind what it's saying to do. And then, you know, definitely put it to prayer. And then if God is still putting it on your heart, I would definitely recommend just go for it. You know, it's, it's different. It's not your normal thing. I've never heard of doing anything like this, but I promise you, it works, and it's just, it's a burden off of you being in ministry and always wondering, you know, am I doing enough? What do the people think? Do they like this activity? It just takes that off. And you know, this is what our church wants to do, and they're excited to do it, and it's wonderful. Yeah, yeah.

Laurie Graham: 27:24

Love it. Love it. We will make sure to link in the show notes, just the articles on our website as well. As you can always go to resources.smallchurchministry.com, and see the resource there as well. So Kelly, thank you so much for being with us today. It's just so good to hear what's working in other small churches in so many places, and looking at how we can help each other in our community. So thanks for being part of our community. So good to have you here today.

Kelly Wilson: 27:52

Yes, thank you for having me, and I just appreciate having that community on Facebook and the website to look at art the articles. It's been a huge blessing to me. Thank you.

Laurie Graham: 28:04

Yeah, awesome. Well, we're so glad you had the time to be with us today as well. So for everybody listening out there Until next week be a light music.